Slashdot Mirror
A Torrid Tale of Plagiarizing Paleontologists
its hard to think of writes "There's an interesting story up at Nature News about scientific ethics. It seems that while one group of scientists is figuring out details about aetosaurs (ancient crocodiles), another group in New Mexico is repeatedly taking credit for their work and naming the new animals they 'discover'. It also looks like the state government, which has been asked to intervene, is trying to sidestep the issue. 'The New Mexico cultural-affairs department, which oversees the museum, conducted a review of two of the instances last October and concluded that the allegations were groundless. But some experts call that review a whitewash, claiming that it failed to follow accepted practices of US academic institutions faced with claims of misconduct. Now all three cases are before the Ethics Education Committee of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, a professional organization based in Northbrook, Illinois, which is awaiting responses from the New Mexico team before making a ruling.' How widespread is this kind of thing?"
I disagree. Graduate students simply do not count for much in academia. While a graduate student at Texas A&M, Dr. Robert Coulson plagiarized a paper that my boss designed and I wrote in 1990. The last half of one of his papers was our paper with no attribution. Coulson had tenure and my boss was trying to get tenure. The University handled this by having Coulson send an errata to the publisher giving my boss a partial authorship credit. My name was not even mentioned. Total cover up. I am convinced this happens all the time.
My graduate supervisor was very outspoken about the fact that his name would not come first on any paper from my research. He said it was his duty to help get the work published but that I deserved the credit. He has done this consistently with all of his graduate students (MSc and PhD). So my point is that not all scientists are so unscrupulous. However, from what I have observed (a bit), the fields of anthropology, archeology and paleontology are filled with people fighting little turf wars. I have heard of people hiding material that they have discovered so that no one else would have a chance to describe it at all. Then they fight any reinterpretation of their results without regard for facts. This is why progress in these fields can be so slow. Any new interpretation is heresy. Even worse, most of the time, they have a tooth, or middle toe or something to hang entire new species on.
I have been surprised at how many times I've been plagiarized by papers that cite my own. Clearly, they're not trying to hide anything, or they wouldn't have bothered to cite the paper that they're copying from, but there seem to be many authors who don't see anything wrong with lifting a paragraph and just changing a couple of words. Certainly the few I've contacted about doing this have seemed very surprised that I should think there's anything wrong with it. Obviously this kind of thing isn't as serious as what's being alleged in TFA, since none of them were claiming credit for my ideas or work, but I think it is laziness and dishonesty to grab something that's someone else's rather than doing it yourself.
never let a man put his dirty how-do-you-do into your bajingo
The problem doesn't lie in the scientific method or in replication, and peer review wouldn't be a problem if people were motivated to do science for science's sake rather than greed. People are they problem. They are not using those processes, at least, not correctly. I try to teach these things in my science classes, but I worry that by trying to make good scientists (biologists in my case), I'm setting my students up to not be able to compete in the real scientific world. :(
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks